Only a two-faced lazy chancer like Johnson could appeal to “the power of sweet reason” to get a Brexit agreement “over the line” without apparent recognition of irony. This is because there is no real link between what comes out of his mouth and any discernible link to what might be loosely termed “reality” in the Conservative dystopia that passes for politics nowadays.
Given Johnson’s morbid narcissism it is impossible to tell whether his assessment of a Brexit agreement as “looking very, very difficult at the moment” is yet another of his macho taunts to the EU showing that he can play the poker hand with steely nerves, or whether he is really preparing us for the fact that we are not actually going to get an agreement as all.
The inherent contradictions (or lies as it might be fairer to call them) in the Brexiteers’ position have always been there. The questions that are the sticking points today have been the areas of confusion from the start, and in the years that the Brexiteers have had to make their plans clear in how they were going to work, they have done virtually nothing, except talk incoherent, self-defeating nonsense. They have no ideas about how to get what they want (when they actually know what it is that they want) except through tantrums and unreasonable demands.
And in the middle (sometimes, when he can be bothered) is the joke of a man who wears the title of prime minister.
Johnson must know that he is in a no-win situation. To gain the agreement of the rabid Brexiteers in the Conservative party, he will lose the majority of the ‘moderate’ (whatever that means in Conservatism nowadays) majority that makes up the Parliamentary party. If he gets anything like a reasonable (whatever that means in terms of Brexit nowadays) agreement, he will have the right-wingers frothing at the mouth. Whatever he manages to get from a reasonable agreement to a full repudiation of Brexit to a no-agreement Brexit, he is going to be pilloried.
You might say, with some justice, that he fully deserves to be attacked en mass; the only thing that drove him to espouse the Brexit ‘idea’ was naked cynicism wrapped in all-devouring ambition. Public service and the country didn’t get a look in. So, we could stand back and watch the blood bath and say, “jolly good riddance!”
Except we can’t. As John Donne stubbornly reminds us, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent” – the irony of the word ‘continent’ being used when you think about Brexit is tellingly ironic!
Although Johnson doesn’t give a damn about us, the ordinary people, we cannot share his wealthy distain for the realities of lived life, we are directly affected by his decisions and the decisions of his party. Johnson may be concerned with his self-image and be concerned about how posterity sees him; we have to live in the world and country that he is making. His wealth largely insulates him from the financial and practical effects of his policies: he is not concerned about the problems of being able to live, he is more concerned with how he appears.
When all is said and done, I simply do not trust Johnson. I don’t trust him as a politician and I don’t trust him as a person. He lacks morality. He is a liar. He is a deceiver. He is an opportunist. And he is deciding my future.
It is a sad and almost tragic thing to say, but I do put my trust in one aspect of Johnson’s modus vivendi, he is a betrayer. He betrays because, as one commentator put it, he lives in the moment and the past is not of any real concern to him.
And that is our hope! Johnson will produce an agreement that goes back on virtually everything that he has said because that is what he does!
It’s a frail hope, but I think it is the only one that we have because “sweet reason” left the room many years ago.
Today has been, continues to be, cold. 13c. It rained briefly last night, but today we have had fluffy clouds with patches of blue – not much actual sunshine, but no rain.
The weather is important because today is a holiday and this time (as opposed to the weekend) people from outside Castelldefels can legally come and walk along the paseo. It is an opportunity for bars and restaurants to try and get some cash flow before Christmas. We went to a restaurant, one of our usual haunts, and it was quite full (with the 50% limit), there were certainly people around and yesterday there were television pictures of queues of people waiting to go into shopping centres to get their Christmas gifts organized.
Which begs the question of what people are going to do during the holiday period. As I have said before, I think that the next month or so is going to be critical in the way that the pandemic pans out. If people regard Christmas as a time to be laxer than they already are, then the middle of January will show a massive jump in infections.
Realistically people are not going to be vaccinated until the middle of next year. I think that I may be lucky if I manage to be vaccinated by April, as I manage to tick a few boxes for the early application of the needle! This means that we will be well into the summer of next year before the majority of the population have had their double injections.
But what I am hearing are sighs of relief that a vaccine, or series of vaccines, are being rolled out and that the horrors of the pandemic are numbered. Which they are not. We are not safe until everyone is safe and we have been told by numerous authorities that Covid is a virus that is not going to be eradicated and is something that we are going to have to live with. For ever. That hard truth has not found its way into many consciousnesses. And that means more death.
On a different topic entirely. I am trying to find out how to treat the rather exotic book cover that I talked about yesterday. This cover is made of suede and is falling to pieces. I am not sure what to apply to the cover to preserve it. Would leather cream or polish do anything? Any thoughts gratefully received!
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